I've heard that many times. I don't subscribe to that view. Replying to yourself is much better than making major updates to a node. So, replying to note major updates to a node is rather the worst of both choices.

Yes I could have, and I also thought about it for a short moment, but then I thought that designing an API (the graphical front end) is somthing that will be used world-wide, and doesn't see any geographical bounds, and thus it would not do any harm in noting that not all readers live in the US of A.

IMHO it is something to keep in mind when your target ausience is global, not national.

I also think that `national' choices have a great deal of impact in how GUI's or other front-ends are generated/designed. Here the style/format of a date is just very small. How about an antry form with address data? In the US a "state" is a required field, whereas in most European countries people curse at having to enter a state that doesn't exist. Some countries have the number of the address in front of the street name where others have it at the end. Both will find "the other way" very very illogical. GUI's and front-ends that require user feedback, and PerlMonks is probably one of those, should very much have that in mind. A perfect GUI will never cause an end-user to curse. I'm afraid the perfect GUI does not exist.

When putting a smiley right before a closing parenthesis, do you:

Use two parentheses: (Like this: :) )
Use one parenthesis: (Like this: :)
Reverse direction of the smiley: (Like this: (: )
Use angle/square brackets instead of parentheses
Use C-style commenting to set the smiley off from the closing parenthesis
Make the smiley a dunce: (:>
I disapprove of emoticons
Other